Elementary Bialgebra Properties of Group Rings and Enveloping Rings: An Introduction to Hopf Algebras.

This is a slight extension of an expository paper I wrote a while ago as a supplement to my joint work with Declan Quinn on Burnside's theorem for Hopf algebras. It was never published, but may still be of interest to students and beginning researchers. LetKbe a field, and letAbe an algebra overK. Then the tensor productA ⊗ A = A ⊗KAis also aK-algebra, and it is quite possible that there exists an algebra homomorphism Δ:A → A ⊗ A. Such a map Δ is called a comultiplication, and the seemingly innocuous assumption on its existence providesAwith a good deal of additional structure. For example, using Δ, one can define a tensor product on the collection ofA-modules, and whenAand Δ satisfy some rather mild axioms, thenAis called a bialgebra. Classical examples of bialgebras include group ringsK[G] and Lie algebra enveloping ringsU(L). Indeed, most of this paper is devoted to a relatively self-contained study of some elementary bialgebra properties of these examples. Furthermore, Δ determines a convolution product on HomK(A,A), and this leads quite naturally to the definition of a Hopf algebra. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]